Deep thought about the Russkies and their war making

In historical scholarship and evaluation, "we" do this thing in the US where we feel this pang of guilt that we only lost 450k guys in WW2 and the Russkies lost whatever they lost, 20M people. So, parenthetical "we". It’s just to say it’s kind of a widely accepted foundational piece of wisdom and sentiment, that the Russkies did the heavy lifting in winning the European war.

Counter observation, brought into focus by Ukraine and the Kotkin article https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin

The Russkies suck at this stuff because it’s a barbarous barbarian society, and they lose 10 times as many people as they should because of the barbarism, and that’s not a thing to admire.

Word pedant: trans sports concern not actually “contrived”

Such that Erin Maye Quade says concern is "contrived", when a pre-op trans woman wins a national collegiate women’s swimming championship.

https://www.startribune.com/transgender-athletes-in-the-spotlight-this-college-season/600160841/

I mean, you might say there should be caution about the exception making the rule…. cuz this kind of thing won’t happen often as a matter of pure incidence, IE, a competitive male athlete in their class deciding to compete in a women’s class. But it isn’t contrived, because it happened, and the response is a response to it actually having happened and not a response to a fiction.

"Maye Quade dismissed concerns that trans women and girls will dominate female sports because of physical advantages. "There is no one thing that makes somebody good or bad at sports," she said."

Puhleeze… Tangential rock solid observation: Erin Maye Quade is a nerd prog, and doesn’t understand athletics in any meaningful way. Not that she’d give a different answer in this case if she did, cuz its all prog gender politics speak anyway.

There’s also the potential incidence reality of, lets take swimming…. Say there’s maybe, pick a number, 25,000 women collegiate swimmers nationally and 3 of them are trans-women from D1 programs and one of the 3 is the national champion each year…. Is it to say that’s not "dominating"? Cuz it is, akshully.

I tellya though, this entire thing gets to exist and be sustained as a culture war skirmish only because a programatically decent varsity high school or college athlete in a team sport hasn’t crossed over as a trans-woman to play said women’s team sport. It’d be a mockery on the pitch, on the diamond, on the rink, on the court such that it happened, and it would deliver a decisive clarity. But it doesn’t happen, and probably won’t, ya know, because of an immovable Overton window that’s immovable because of attributes of team sports and attributes of people with gender dysphoria. IE, there isn’t a womens’ team sports coach and league that would accommodate a trans woman player as a feature of like, Title IX yada yada… that shit would just get subverted, big "no vacancy" sign, no team would take her. AND. There isn’t a player in men’s team sports that would do it. Being there on a men’s roster is mutually exclusive of desiring to play team sports as a woman, no matter what you think of your own sexuality.

Sure looks like Hunter and James Biden knew they were operating a no-work grift

https://www.startribune.com/inside-hunter-bidens-multimillion-dollar-deals-with-a-chinese-energy-company/600160743/

This stuff speaks for itself. There was no meaningful business enterprise here. To the Chinese this was "cost of doing business money" to have some avenues into the high corridors of US government. To Hunter and James Biden… they knew it was not an actual business enterprise, and they were happy to be used at that price.

Into the story, you read that the Chinese were getting a little miffed they were not getting value for the money. I’m kinda surprised about that, that there was a minimal expectation of ‘value’ or ‘work’.

Benefitting from universal DH: Albert Pujols

Pujols is "42", has 679 lifetime HRs, and will join the Cards for one year.

I did a post here strictly so I could irony parenthesize Pujols’ age.

I’m totally fine with KBJ

I said off hand yesterday, I think there should be pro-defendent SCOTUS judges. So I support KBJ’s nomination. She’s perfectly qualified and the reporting on her reveals a perfectly good personal / professional temperament and it would be a fine thing for the GOP to take a little partisan piss out of SCOTUS fights by honest broker participating in confirming her such that she’s going to be confirmed anyway.

But no… you get this ridiculous low brow law and order baiting, on cue https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/cory-booker-democrats-ketanji-brown-jackson.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/22/trailer-how-campaign-rhetoric-about-child-porn-made-it-supreme-court-hearing/

Ya know, I did a somewhat retrograde screed yesterday about transexuals, but I actually purposefully avoid ick reflexes when I analyse sexual politics. Parcel to that I think internet pornography crimes are often adjudicated excessively. Andrew McCarthy is NR’s law analysts, and he’s been a “law and order” type conservative legal mind. I’m surprised to find that’s his sentiment here in *support* of KBJ.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/judge-jackson-and-judiciary-committee-republicans-joust-on-child-porn-possession-case-against-18-year-old-again/

The tranny wars are really useful as an asshole black light, I suppose…

I’m actually very self-conscious of truth bombing from the head space of a right wing crank. Being reflexively cautious of that, I think, is a thing that keeps my mind open [..ahem as I age], keeps me a life long learner, keeps me attuned to wisdom, keeps me with a bearing on empathy. And I totally cultivate my hippie peacenik vibe, totally.

Lia Thomas and Rachel Levine et al are men, and they have an exotic psychological condition. They’re not women. There’s your cosmic wisdom on that, expressed in literal, non-judgemental, unprovocative terms. The details that support that cosmically obvious observation are voluminous, and reciting them is not ‘me’. Insert “she’s a guy” meme here right.

I can envision an optimal ambiance in the nation where men can live as women and women can live as men if they want and it’s no great spectacle. Lia Thomas competing against women is total post modern garbage though, the biological sexes should use their own bathrooms, and none of this stuff needs to be treated by curriculum in public schools.

Oh but trangender issues are “complicated”… https://twitter.com/DamonLinker/status/1506348831738314752

No, they’re not. That’s a complete cop out used by voices on the contemporary neo-lib moderate left who know better but won’t take on the radical gender left.

You never get any Chait on this, never any MattY, et al, because even they ain’t that ballsy as contrarians. Bill Maher is copping out too. The only thing he’s said is this Andy Rooney-esque take where he lamented that we weren’t fighting over teaching trans issues in school to preschoolers until very recently. That’s a cop out, and substitute for an opinion he’s not sharing, that I’d bet aligns with mine.

See also “who really knows what a woman is? … It’s such a flexible thing!” https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/its-ok-im-not-a-biologist-either/ (PS my preference would be Brown Jackson be confirmed with every GOP vote. Personally I think it’s a great addition to SCOTUS because she’s very pro-defendent). Complete cop out by the temperamental sensible half of the “follow the science” crowd.

The other half of that crowd among the Dem and libs, the gender radicals? They’re attention seeking Marxist misanthropes driving that agenda. And they have a co-dependency with the assholes on the right who fight the other side of the trans war. And yeah, I know perfectly well the culture war right is full of assholes. On this one issue at least though, they happen to be correct. It’s too much to ask of normie culture that trans people be accommodated the way they want when it’s a psychological feature and it’s less than .5 or even .1 of the population.

That’s [part of] the righty counterargument. Is that inherently asshole? No. DeSantis, whoever, may be assholes in many ways but the pushback and counter argument ain’t qualitatively asshole in itself. But I don’t know that that can be separated, the asshole making the what’s regarded as a provocative counter observation, when no genteel temperamental moderates will step up that way.

The media problem with the Hunter laptop

And there is one, even if, yes, it came to the fore as a Rudy G smear op.

Kevin Drum latches on to that, right, that it was a Guiliani smear op, to justify big institutional media disregarding the story.

https://jabberwocking.com/the-biden-laptop-was-real-but-that-hardly-matters/

Puleaze. So, so obtuse. I mean, if you can properly superficially understand that Hunter didn’t have the chops to be doing the business he was, then you possess the analytic insight to understand that the laptop emails might be real. Which is to say two elements can be true and not in contradiction. I did that from here, in my chair here in the hinterlands…. said, yep, it comes from Rudy Guiliani smear op. And. It’s real. There’s got to be space in the analysis for both to be true, ya know.

But the bigger thing, the bigger problem, with the bias example at play with the Hunter story is … the mainstream institutional media won’t investigate a credible news lead like this on their own, because of their political bias. And. They also won’t take the word of conservative news gathering that ends up doing the investigative work. It’s a kafka trap of some kind.

An example that makes the rule with this: Ilhan Omar, who ya know, married her brother to get him legal status in the country but denies it. Press won’t report on it far enough to make a determination on it, takes the word of Democrat spokes douches who say its ‘debunked’ but extend no illustration of its actual debunked-ness.

Pfft – Carlos Correa hasn’t even had a 100 rbi season

JK, he’s about as good an SS as you can have. Good / better than Jeter at his peak.

“Cheap Pohlads” probably should have died in the Target Field years, cuz they did make some big contracts here and there (Joe Mauer), but they obviously did not participate in the trends of the game the way the large market teams did. Never signed external super duper stars is the thing. Such that they did sign external players, they played a value shopping game with solid-ish veterans (Ricky Nolasco, Ervin Santana) on 4 year contracts. And also, played a speculative gambit signing to MLB contracts some Japanese and Korean stars who projected as fringy.

This Correa thing here doesn’t actually represent the Twins participating in the trends of the game the way the bigger market teams do, ya know, 5 years or more and 9 figures… this remains kinda different, cuz its short term. https://www.startribune.com/real-winner-in-the-carlos-correa-twins-signing-scott-boras-patrick-reusse/600157646/

Philosophically, this organization has always been very, very fearful of dead money years (via injury or poor performance) in multi year contracts. But, when this opportunity presented itself to sign Carlos Correa for 1 year at the age of 28, at the highest MLB salary for an infielder…. they did it. That’s a meaningful serious thing… speaks well of the Pohlad’s and their desire for a quality product and an understanding of the inputs and outputs. See, they’ll make money over the $35M of expense that goes to Correa…

New CBA with its revised postseason structure suggests that 85 wins is the threshold to make the playoffs. 3 weeks ago the Twins were perfectly properly evaluated as say an 80 win team in 2022. The best shortstop in the game gets you there, gets you another 7 wins. A lot of things can suck, like starting pitching… and they’ll make the playoffs.

So, very cool signing.

Um… I still think this kinda shows as a weak team offensively, which is a different instinct than everyone else at this moment.

I feel like Max Keppler is going into end stage career
I feel like Miguel Sano is going into end stage career

I’m not convinced Luis Arraez is a .300 MLB hitter.
I’m not convinced Kihrloff is a productive star.
I’m not convinced Larnach is a productive star.

Weak catching.

Buxton is great and Polanco is a pro that any MLB team would be glad to have.

Un-debunked: Hunter’s laptop

Alternate headline: The laptop was real, no shit sherlock,

The righty media is snickering at this NYT story today (yesterday).

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-tax-bill-investigation.html

And their point about the media bias is correct. The most egregious thing 2 years back was the Facebook and Twitter "misinformation" firewall coaxed by Obama era intelligence officials, and then also Joe Biden himself.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sure-seems-joe-biden-knowingly-lied-about-the-hunter-biden-laptop-story/

Me, the pedant: I was perfectly comfortable with an observation that Joe Biden is tainted by Hunter Biden’s unethicalness, and you vote for Joe Biden anyway cuz in this binary choice the other choice was Donald Trump.

https://zingyskywaylunch.wordpress.com/2020/10/21/hunter-biden-truth-bomb/

But, ya know, politicians flack and obfuscate by instinct, given the chance. This instinct here was directly reinforced by Comey’s last week thing there in 2016 with Huma’s dork masturbating husband. Yeah, that’s how the details come to me as I recall it from memory right now.

Tangental post mortem: Trump’s Hunter corruption quid pro quo phone call to Zelensky obviously had a way of solidifying Putin’s thoughts on Ukraine.

I do not hunt for deals on gas

Cuz, I arranged my driving habits much as I could to not have to worry about it. And I thus don’t worry about it.

https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-drivers-start-hunting-for-deals-on-filling-up-the-tank/600156862/